Honestly, I'm so chuffed.
I isolated and read a lot as a child, and when I imagined the future as someone who made these rpg books it seemed like a fantasy. It's amazing every day I wake up. And it's because of you, so thanks! I am grateful daily.
What's really cool though, is the Sinless gameplay loop.
Focus on the Gameplay Loop
In the tactical mercenary team game, there are two phases. The tactical mission, and the base/character building. You get new toys, you go on the next mission to play with the toys, and you get more toys.
But in an role-playing game?
It's not limited like those spaces. It's not the Argo or the Avenger. How to increase the scope without chaos?
Enter sectors and resources. Each sector is a conceptual downtown space, laid over a map like a point-crawl, rather than a consistent physical measure of distance. And each space has a variety of resources which are things like "apartments", "casinos", "power stations", "media outlets," et. al. The full list is in the rules document available to backers.
These resources are general categories (e.g. factories) that turned into specific resources in a sector. (e.g. Westfork Chemical Processing). Players can take over resources from their owners using sector actions. Players can blow up and demolish resources from their owners. Players can build new resources in empty spots.
But it's even better than that.
One of the sector actions available is "Do Crime". And while crime generates revenue, it also raises heat. In my Monday session, players raised the heat in their sector to 2 by doing crime, which gives a bonus to the amount of money all vice resources produce, meaning the bar they own made more money! (conversely, having no heat is a boon to business resources.)
You can do enough crime in a sector to cause a crackdown. This causes a heavy enforcement presence and shuts down all resources in the sector. This is also a way to solve problems.
The actions in the sector turn affect the operational turns (the uh, tactical crime operation). The actions during the operational turn affect the sector turns. This is explicit mechanically. e.g.
"After the session, the players and Agonarch agree on a level of destruction (none, some, lots, total) and a level of influence exerted on a resource (none, minor, major, exceptional). Some destruction does 1d3 damage, lots of destruction does 1d6, and total destruction does 2d6 damage to the resource condition track. Minor influence grants 1 point, major grants 2, and exceptional grants 3. Heat is raised by 1 for minor changes, 2 for major ones, and 3 for exceptional/total changes."
So at the end of every job, they get paid, and can use sector turns to raise more money, buy rare gear, purchase additional assets, build up their resources and take over new resources. Then they get a new job which is an opportunity to use all their new tools! Both assets and resources can provide bonuses during operations. One asset might allow you to plant bombs or guns in the operation site, others might affect all the guards or shut down digital defenses.
So it's this nice loop during play. They finish a mission, get money and kismet to level up. They level up, and turn to the sector turn to invest/spend their money. They get a lot of new stuff (assets, gear, abilities) and progress during the sector turn. Then leveled up they look for a new job.
